Replenishing Calcium Stores Should Get At Least As Much (if Not More) Emphasis Than Depleting PUFA?

lampofred

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When I started Peating, I felt amazing for the first several months, then felt great for a couple of years at a more subdued level, and finally have now crashed. I think I've been noticing more and more people with a similar pattern of feeling great at first but then stagnating and developing chronic fatigue and similar issues.

I am realizing that even though PUFA act as a brake on the metabolism and reducing them will allow your system to operate at full speed, the actual "energy reservoir" of your body is represented by its calcium reserves. If you increase the size of the engine (thyroid function) without increasing the capacity of the gas tank and refueling more often (calcium) then you will very quickly find yourself stuck in the middle of the highway unable to move...

I realize this just sounds like a hunch right now, but I am trying to think of analogies and find studies that will support this, and will update this post once I get something. It is just common sense that with a faster metabolism you will need more food in general, but I think it is calcium specifically that is extremely important.

I think this might be why Dr. Peat places so much emphasis on milk.
 
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SOMO

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Electrolyte balance is underrated and it’s importance can not be overstated.

I was hospitalized 3x in my life for LOW Sodium.

Once for Hypercalcemia.

Hypercalcemia was caused by Vit D supplementation though, not by calcium. I didn’t even consume dairy at that point in my life.
 

Cirion

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My data tracking has not shown this importance of calcium that Ray talks about. It remains probably the only point my experimentation can't prove Ray on. That said, I seem to see success with maple syrup which is somewhat rich in calcium and has zero phosphorus. That may be part of the problem, is that milk is actually not super effective at boosting the calcium:phosphorus ratio as its rich in calcium AND phosphorus. Maple syrup is one of the only foods that is highly effective at boosting Ca:P ratio due to its lack of phosphorus.

Also I no longer think diet can rectify all hypothyroid problems. I'm reminded of this last night after getting an awesome 12 hr of sleep and feeling better than I have in a few weeks. If you have the perfect diet but undersleep, exposed to excess EMF, get no sunlight, work a stressful job etc you will never recover. Unfortunately, that's just how it is.
 

YourUniverse

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I think electrolytes and B-vitamins determine quality of life. Whenever I think I can eat lots of white sugar, I get reminded why fruit is king.

I think milk is so heavily emphasized because it is literally the most complete food there is. Even liver has caveats, with phosphate and vitamin A. Milk can be drunk infinitely/indefinitely and covers virtually all the bases.
 
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lampofred

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My data tracking has not shown this importance of calcium that Ray talks about. It remains probably the only point my experimentation can't prove Ray on. That said, I seem to see success with maple syrup which is somewhat rich in calcium and has zero phosphorus. That may be part of the problem, is that milk is actually not super effective at boosting the calcium:phosphorus ratio as its rich in calcium AND phosphorus. Maple syrup is one of the only foods that is highly effective at boosting Ca:P ratio due to its lack of phosphorus.

Also I no longer think diet can rectify all hypothyroid problems. I'm reminded of this last night after getting an awesome 12 hr of sleep and feeling better than I have in a few weeks. If you have the perfect diet but undersleep, exposed to excess EMF, get no sunlight, work a stressful job etc you will never recover. Unfortunately, that's just how it is.

Yes calcium will actually lower metabolism because it turns off excess stimulation and allows your inner reserves to get replenished. I think without sufficient calcium, you will metabolize at a faster rate than your body can truly handle and end up with chronic fatigue, arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc.
 

Cirion

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Yes calcium will actually lower metabolism because it turns off excess stimulation. I think without sufficient calcium, you will metabolize at a faster rate than your body can truly handle and end up with chronic fatigue, arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc.

Nah man at least milk lowers metabolism (at least if you can't digest it, which I'd argue is most hypo people) and its because of the tryptophan -> serotonin. Also there's a difference between shutting off stress and dialing down metabolism. The goal should be to shut off stress, not dial down the metabolism. Dialing down the metabolism is universally a bad thing. By shutting off stress you might expose a bad metabolism, but the goal should never be to make a bad metabolism worse. I keep things simple now. If something makes me worse and lowers body temps - it's bad. Period.
 

Kingpinguin

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Crashing with chronic fatigue after years of a low iron diet is whats happening.
FF8C8016-02E3-4B27-A5F9-9C76DBE3D57E.jpeg
25% of the world population are low. Then add the fact that you eat low iron food like dairy and even when you get iron from liver you chug coffee to block it.
 

charlie

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When I started Peating, I felt amazing for the first several months, then felt great for a couple of years at a more subdued level, and finally have now crashed. I think I've been noticing more and more people with a similar pattern of feeling great at first but then stagnating and developing chronic fatigue and similar issues.
I was just out walking and was thinking through the same thing. I went through the same exact process you described above. But my leaning is towards B vitamins and their co-factors being depleted. And probably some other deficiencies. I think we ramp up metabolism and burn it all up. Especially the B vitamins since we eat "clean" and stay away from fortified foods. The stress load is quite high right now in society so more B's get burnt up. And who here regularly eats enough liver and then you gotta be watchful for vitamin A overload(yeh I went there).

So yeh, I am in agreement with deficiency, not sure if calcium but I would almost bet the farm that its the B vitamins and their cofactors along with some others.
 

Cirion

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I was just out walking and was thinking through the same thing. I went through the same exact process you described above. But my leaning is towards B vitamins and their co-factors being depleted. And probably some other deficiencies. I think we ramp up metabolism and burn it all up. Especially the B vitamins since we eat "clean" and stay away from fortified foods. The stress load is quite high right now in society so more B's get burnt up. And who here regularly eats enough liver and then you gotta be watchful for vitamin A overload(yeh I went there).

So yeh, I am in agreement with deficiency, not sure if calcium but I would almost bet the farm that its the B vitamins and their cofactors along with some others.

Not to necessarily bring us down the rabbit hole of VA toxicity / derail the thread, but I just have to ask... how to reconcile high vitamin A content in liver? Amazoniac found out that eating liver really does help fix a fatty liver from some research he posted a while back. But then too much VA may in fact aggravate a fatty liver. So what to do? I guess just limit intake to once a week (which was basically my plan). B-vitamins alone hasn't been enough so I'm going to start experimenting with organ meat again (I'm still standing by what I say about muscle meats being anti-thyroid in any quantity tho, so no plain old ground beef anymore, my vegan-esque experiments have proved the detrimental effects of muscle meats).
 

charlie

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B-vitamins alone hasn't been enough...
It can take months to turn around a b vitamin deficiency. Maybe the repletion is quicker but the happenings that must be turned back on take some time. Hoffer said he would get relief of patients in 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, etc.

With that said I dunno how to get around the vitapoison A thing.
 

Cirion

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It can take months to turn around a b vitamin deficiency. Maybe the repletion is quicker but the happenings that must be turned back on take some time. Hoffer said he would get relief of patients in 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, etc.

With that said I dunno how to get around the vitapoison A thing.

Thanks, I'll definitely keep religiously using energin for at least a couple months for sure.

Like everything else, "The best method is experiment" -- Ray Peat. So I'll play with B vitamins, organ meats, and adjust accordingly according to experimental results.
 
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lampofred

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I was just out walking and was thinking through the same thing. I went through the same exact process you described above. But my leaning is towards B vitamins and their co-factors being depleted. And probably some other deficiencies. I think we ramp up metabolism and burn it all up. Especially the B vitamins since we eat "clean" and stay away from fortified foods. The stress load is quite high right now in society so more B's get burnt up. And who here regularly eats enough liver and then you gotta be watchful for vitamin A overload(yeh I went there).

So yeh, I am in agreement with deficiency, not sure if calcium but I would almost bet the farm that its the B vitamins and their cofactors along with some others.

I agree that B-vitamins are low in many people, although I don't know if just supplementing them would be enough as opposed to reducing the stress that burns them up in the first place. I think screens and blue light, especially considering how smart phone use has skyrocketed in the past 4 or so years, might be playing a large role in this. Blue light quickly destroys B2, and without B2, B3 and B6 cannot get produced. As a result, oxidative respiration gets turned off and serotonin rises, and with low B3, you have a gross excess of phosphate and deficiency of calcium. Everything is so interconnected.

This might also be why older generations don't seem to have the issues the younger generations do. Much less blue light exposure from screens. It might be that it's not social media that's the fundamental cause of the problem associated with smartphone/computer usage as is claimed, it's the blue light itself. I read that Bill Clinton doesn't use the internet. He has his aides print out all news for him on actual paper. I wonder why...
 

SOMO

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My data tracking has not shown this importance of calcium that Ray talks about. It remains probably the only point my experimentation can't prove Ray on. That said, I seem to see success with maple syrup which is somewhat rich in calcium and has zero phosphorus. That may be part of the problem, is that milk is actually not super effective at boosting the calcium:phosphorus ratio as its rich in calcium AND phosphorus. Maple syrup is one of the only foods that is highly effective at boosting Ca:P ratio due to its lack of phosphorus.

Also I no longer think diet can rectify all hypothyroid problems. I'm reminded of this last night after getting an awesome 12 hr of sleep and feeling better than I have in a few weeks. If you have the perfect diet but undersleep, exposed to excess EMF, get no sunlight, work a stressful job etc you will never recover. Unfortunately, that's just how it is.

You’re mistaken about the Ca:P in milk.

The calcium in milk is not free/ionic.
It is in the form of Hydroxyapatite, that is BOUND to the phosphate.

Bones are not made of calcium, they are made of Hydroxyapatite.
 

Cirion

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Just took some time to plot out calcium from my personal database since I admit I was curious as to what I would find out.



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This is two week avg data. X-axis is mg of calcium on second plot, and Y axis is % metabolism as rated by meeting waking temp of 98.6F and waking pulse of 85 BPM (that's considered 100%). two week avg of 100% would mean those metrics achieved each and every day of all 14 days.

This suggests that somewhere between 1-1.5 gram of calcium is sufficient, and somewhere in 0.75-1 calcium:phosphorus ratio is probably enough.
 

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Cirion

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Well now, I just made a new parameter with a resultant interesting plot. Calcium divided by tryptophan (this is to kind of include the effects of milk in the plot since milk is rich in it) as expected, a high Ca/Tryptophan ratio is good (which means NOT getting calcium from milk), BUT, what I wasn't quite expecting to see is that the benefits fall off after a while. Well the other plot says too much calcium is unhelpful also so I guess that's why. Let this be a caution not to go crazy on calcium and too much calcium may actually harm metabolism. (For me, on the order of 1.5 gram a day is my limit). Not necessarily saying don't drink milk (but milk doesn't work for me really), but I am pretty much saying don't go drinking a gallon a day. Never understood why people go down that road. I think it's almost always folly to use one single food as most/all of your calories.

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BigChad

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Electrolyte balance is underrated and it’s importance can not be overstated.

I was hospitalized 3x in my life for LOW Sodium.

Once for Hypercalcemia.

Hypercalcemia was caused by Vit D supplementation though, not by calcium. I didn’t even consume dairy at that point in my life.

how much vitamin d were you taking. how much vitamin A and K?
 

Lokzo

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Electrolyte balance is underrated and it’s importance can not be overstated.

I was hospitalized 3x in my life for LOW Sodium.

Two excellent points.

And thank you @lampofred for opening this thread...

I was ab(using) magnesium supplements for a long time, and I think it was really problematic for me, since I barely have dairy.
 

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